by S. M. Reine
Elise lifted an eyebrow. “Jerica?”
“Gone,” Gerard said. He swallowed hard. “Tasered.”
She was surprised to feel a sense of loss at this. Jerica wasn’t dead, really—just reduced to a barely lifeless ooze in Malebolge. But she had never heard of a nightmare coming back from that. It was effectively the same thing. “Did she die well?”
“Yeah,” he said, “she did good.”
There wasn’t much more they could ask for than that. “How did the two of you alone manage the soul links? Who’s the third?”
“You,” Neuma said.
She showed Elise the vial with the X on the label. It was empty.
Elise’s heart dropped. She had told Nash that she would use that blood to close the fissure, but instead it had been used to take the Palace. She took the bottle and pressed her thumb against the point until it hurt. “Okay,” she said levelly. “Thanks. I know you did what you needed to, but we should find someone to replace Gerard. Having one of the soul links walking around on Earth is too dangerous.”
“You kidding? I’m staying in the Palace,” he said. “It’s not every day you get to be a human in charge of the City of Dis. And there’s a lot more slaves that need to be freed. I want to help.”
Elise shrugged stiffly. Easier than finding a replacement. “As long as you know the risks.”
Neuma gave her a sideways look. “You okay? You’re looking awfully pale.”
Parting her too-small jacket, which she had borrowed from Rylie, Elise showed Neuma the wound on her stomach. It hadn’t even begun to heal.
“Yikes,” Gerard said.
Neuma grabbed her arm. “Get in the truck. We’ll go back to the Palace and get you fed.”
Elise was about to let Neuma put her in the pickup, but a soft sound caught her attention—the crunch of footsteps on freshly fallen snow.
Rylie appeared from the pale darkness, standing between the snowy trees. Her blond hair almost blended in with the white hill behind her. She had come alone, without any of her usual entourage, and the sight of it made Elise’s heart drop.
They hadn’t talked about Seth yet. They had been too busy trying to clean up the mess they had just survived. And despite the moment of giddy relief they had shared, there was a lot of air to clear between them—and if Rylie had come alone, that meant it was time to talk.
And it was not going to be good.
Elise firmed her jaw. “Hey,” she greeted in a neutral voice.
“Are you leaving?” Rylie asked.
“Not yet.”
“Good.”
Rylie struck Elise hard enough to make her stagger. She tensed in anticipation of claws being dug into her belly, prepared to take whatever pain the werewolf felt she needed to inflict—but Rylie didn’t attack.
The Alpha was hugging her.
Shock rippled through Elise. She held her hands in the air over Rylie’s shoulders, unsure of how to return the gesture. Over Rylie’s head, she could see Neuma watching with a grin, like the hug was the funniest thing she had ever seen.
Elise flipped a middle finger at her.
“Thank you,” Rylie said against her shoulder, squeezing Elise tight. It made the injury sting like it had been inflicted anew. “Thank you.”
Elise winced, but didn’t pull back. Heck if she knew why, but Rylie wasn’t angry with her. This wasn’t the talk she had expected and it left her far more unsettled than she would have been if Rylie had just attacked. With no idea what else she could do, Elise settled her arms around Rylie’s back and returned the hug with all the affection she could muster—which wasn’t much at all, but slightly better than nothing.
“How’s Abel?” Elise asked. He had taken a stab wound from a silver knife better than she expected, but Nash had still been forced to carry him back to the sanctuary, pride be damned. Survival didn’t mean he wasn’t struggling.
“He’s fine,” Rylie said. “He’ll be kind of rough around the edges for a few weeks, but in a couple of moons, he’ll be back to normal.” Werewolves didn’t project their brain signals as much as typical mortals, but Rylie’s relief was painted in her every thought and every line of her face. “The angels are helping us with the logistics of getting the humans to the evacuation sites—those of them who want to go. A lot seem happy to stay here.”
“Here? Do you have the supplies to support that?”
“Not really. But I’m a country girl. We can always find a couch for anyone who wants it—especially heroes like these.” She bit her lip and smiled. “We’ll keep them as long as we can manage it.”
There was a heavy silence after that statement. Elise wanted to ask her so many things, but the words wouldn’t come out while they had spectators. She glanced at Neuma and Gerard. “Would you mind…?”
Gerard backed toward the pickup, hands lifted. “No problem. We’ll wait for you.”
They climbed into the pickup and shut the door.
Elise and Rylie were alone on the road, snow drifting around them, sticking to their hair. Elise considered her next words carefully, trying not to let her feelings show on her face. “I talked to Nash while we were in Hell. It seems that you didn’t tell any of them what I did.”
“What did you do?”
She still lowered her voice to a whisper. “You saw me kill…him.” She didn’t dare say Seth’s name.
“I saw you defend yourself,” Rylie said. “I saw him trying to save me.” She hesitated for a moment before touching Elise’s arm. “I’m responsible for what happened that night. If I’m going to confess anything to the pack, it needs to be what I did to him. Why I was choosing to step down from being Alpha, and how Seth is the one who saved me.” Her chin trembled. “How he tried to save me.”
“You didn’t kill him,” Elise said.
Rylie squeezed her arm, and then released it. Her face was red, but her expression was empty, as though she had run out of the stamina to grieve anymore. “I might as well have held the sword myself,” she whispered.
Elise wasn’t sure if it was Eve that felt so sorry for Rylie, or if it was her own feelings. She couldn’t tell the difference half the time anymore.
Nash had said that the pack needed closure. They needed to know what had happened—they needed Seth’s body. But what Rylie needed more than anyone else was to forgive herself and move on. They couldn’t change what they had done. They could only grieve.
Elise drew the handgun and extended it toward Rylie.
“This is a Beretta,” Elise said. “It belonged to—”
“That was Seth’s gun.” Rylie’s cheeks were colorless. She reached for it, hands trembling, but drew back. “That’s the one that he shot you with.”
“I’ve been using it during my campaign in Hell. It’s done its job well. You should take it.”
Rylie bit her bottom lip. She dropped her hands to her sides. “I wouldn’t use it. I think that Seth would be happy to know that it was being used in the fight. You know, that you’re saving people with his weapon. That would mean a lot to him. Keep it.”
Elise nodded once and tucked the gun into her waistband again. It was heavy at the small of her back. A fitting reminder of how easy it was for good people to die when she became careless.
She didn’t thank Rylie. Words weren’t enough.
There were better ways to show her gratitude.
A few hours later, Elise returned to the House of Abraxas for the last time, prepared to fight Belphegor—as prepared as she could ever be. Her hands bristled with blazing red runes extracted from James’s notebook. She was prepared to rip apart the land, put magical walls around Belphegor, drop the whole damn mountain on his head if need be. Neuma had allowed Elise to feed again, so she was strong and deadly.
But she wasn’t taking any risks where Belphegor was concerned. Elise had come with Nash and a half-dozen angels at her back. Convincing them to help hadn’t been difficult—all she’d had to do was promise to return the ethereal artifacts. Between her mag
ic and her backup, she had enough power to destroy the entire city.
Yet Belphegor wasn’t in the House of Abraxas. The wards had been stripped from the battlements, but not replaced. The barracks and canteen were empty.
“Where is he?” Nash asked.
She nudged open the door of the warehouse with her shoulder.
All of the crates were gone. The room was empty.
“I don’t think he’s here,” Elise said. “Spread out. Check the house.”
The angels separated into teams, taking the east and west wings. Elise didn’t bother helping them search. She immediately went to Abraxas’s office.
Though she had returned to the House intending to kill Belphegor, that had only been secondary to her primary objective—the objective whose body had been turned to black stone and rested on a table beside Abraxas’s desk. Relief weakened her at the sight of Seth. The shroud was pooled on the floor next to him, but he hadn’t been taken.
Yet Abraxas’s office was in disarray, too. The shelves had been emptied. The pile of ethereal artifacts that Elise had promised Nash—all gone.
Damn.
Belphegor hadn’t followed Elise to the Palace because he hadn’t cared about the Palace. All he had wanted was the House. Or, more specifically, what Abraxas had been storing in the House. What had Elise temporarily possessed that had been worth letting the Palace fall? What had been more important than retaining control of the city?
Though she was the one soul linked to the Palace wards, most of her human army had survived, and Aquiel’s forces hadn’t made it to Earth, she suddenly had the unsettling sense that she had lost the battle.
Maybe the entire war.
When the angels joined her in the office, she knew what they were going to say before they even spoke. “There’s no sign of Belphegor,” Nash said.
No, he was already gone with the ethereal artifacts, and whatever else of value had been in the House of Abraxas.
It only took Nash an instant to realize that the pieces of the gateway were gone. His expression darkened.
“We’re too late,” Elise said.
The other angels didn’t react at all. Oh, they were definitely pissed—Elise could sense it in the way they held themselves. But they weren’t going to throw a fit where she could see them. They weren’t going to be weak in front of a demon.
Elise struggled to control her fingers well enough to extract the gloves from the inner pocket of her jacket. She tugged them on one at a time, concealing the magic underneath. “Help me carry this back to Earth.” She rested her hand on Seth’s chest to indicate his body.
The angels surrounded Seth’s body. Each of them rested a hand on him, too, almost reverently.
“Lilith’s poison,” murmured the one that had identified himself as Uriel.
Nash and Elise’s eyes met over his rigid form. There was understanding in his eyes. He understood what Elise was about to do, and nodded his approval.
Elise and the angels took Seth home.
Rylie and Summer watched over Lincoln Marshall for hours. Neither of them liked having the deputy in their sanctuary again, not after what he had done, but they hadn’t been able to refuse Elise when she asked for the favor. It was an easy job. Lincoln had been sleeping ever since they’d dragged his body from Poppy’s Diner, and Rylie was starting to wonder if he might never wake up again.
She almost hoped that he wouldn’t.
The fear that Lincoln might wake up and attack was a good distraction, at the very least. Elise had left and taken Nash with her. Worrying about Lincoln was a little easier than worrying about Nash, especially for Summer.
Rylie was adjusting Lincoln’s pillow when she felt it—a shiver down her spine. The scent of buttered popcorn followed a moment later.
Her eyes met Summer’s. “Did you feel that?”
But her daughter was already striding toward the door, pulling on a scarf, running outside.
The entire group appeared at once, emerging from the heavy snowfall beside the lake like specters. The five angels had their wings outstretched, swords at their hips. None of them glowed with ethereal light. They kept everything contained for the sake of the woman who led them—Elise, with all of her black hair and black leather, like an ebony king on a chessboard trapped between the white side’s marble knights and bishops.
Rylie smiled to see her. Elise didn’t smile back.
The demon stepped aside. Rylie saw what was behind her, and her entire world turned dark.
Two of the angels were carrying Seth’s body between them.
She sank to her knees in the snow, hands clapped to her mouth. Summer was hugging her. She could sense her daughter’s warmth, but didn’t really feel it. There was a cold, gaping void inside of Rylie at the sight of him.
For an instant, Rylie was reliving the nightmare again, for the thousandth time since Seth’s death. She was beside the fissure watching the ichor creep over Seth’s body. She could hear him laboring for breath while his lungs turned to stone. He had looked at her with such love and fear, struggling to speak. Rylie thought that Seth had been trying to tell her that he still loved her. He didn’t need to say it. She wished that he hadn’t. She wanted to remember all the times that Seth had said he loved her when they were alive and happy together, not on the brink of oblivion with the fires of Hell raging around them.
And here he was with that horrible look on his face, eyes frozen and hand lifted toward Rylie, just as he had been when he died.
When that waking nightmare drained from her again, all that remained was the silent snowfall, the obsidian body, and an aching sense of finality. Rylie stretched out a shaking hand to touch him. He felt solid and real. Not a nightmare at all, but cold reality.
Seth was gone. Really gone.
It was over.
Elise rested a hand on Rylie’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but it was time.”
Abel insisted on putting Seth in his bedroom for now. Elise supervised the angels transferring him there, arms folded across her chest, a severe frown darkening her features. “Thank you,” Nash told the other angels. It was strange to see him standing alongside his kind instead of the pack. He held himself differently—even when he gripped Summer’s hand.
His brethren didn’t respond to him. Only the woman, Leliel, turned to Elise to speak. “This is only the beginning. We must take time to formulate our strategies,” she said. She gestured to the other angels, including Nash. “We’ll be in contact with you shortly.”
“I look forward to it,” Elise said in a way that made it clear that she didn’t look forward to it at all.
Nash brushed a kiss over Summer’s temple, and then all of the angels vanished. The air stirred around them.
Nobody else moved.
All who remained in the cottage now were family: Rylie, Abel, Summer, Abram…and Elise. New unofficial pack member, still very much out of place with the others. But nobody seemed to notice her presence. They were all staring at Seth, taking in the sight of his body. For most of them, it was the first time they had seen him.
Rylie couldn’t look anymore. She kept her eyes on her feet.
“You all deserve to know what happened,” Elise said after a protracted silence, her eyes flicking to each of their faces.
With an unpleasant jolt, Rylie realized that Elise was going to tell them the truth. No—she was going to tell them her truth. Elise was going to tell the family that she had killed Seth.
Everyone would hate her for it. Abel would probably attack immediately, and if Elise survived that, it would mean taking the war to a whole new level. It would mean werewolf versus demon. It would put them on opposite sides.
And it would give them enough information to figure out how Rylie was really responsible for Seth’s death.
“What happened?” Summer asked. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Abram had his arm around her shoulders, hugging her tight against his side.
“It was at the Breaking,” Elise
said. “Seth was there to—”
Rylie interrupted her. “He was there to help us. We were trying to figure out how to fix what had gone wrong. Demons crawled out of the fissure, Seth stepped in to give us time to escape, and they killed him for it.” The lie came out of her in a rush. She could feel everyone staring at her, but she could only look at Elise, apologizing silently with her eyes.
Elise gave her a blank look. The walls surrounding them were more emotive than she was.
Summer’s hand smoothed over Rylie’s hair. “I thought it was something like that. It’s okay. You don’t have to tell us anything else.” She was being so sweet, so sympathetic—still trying to protect Rylie from the pain of reliving Seth’s death by talking about it. Except that Rylie was lying. It hurt almost as much as seeing Seth again.
“He was trying to let you escape,” Abel said to Elise flatly, like he didn’t believe it. And why would he? Everyone knew how powerful Elise was. The idea that Seth could die trying to save her was ridiculous. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. Especially not if Elise contradicted Rylie.
Elise ignored him. She was still looking at Rylie with that impossibly blank expression. Her black eyes were endless pits.
“Yes,” she finally said, resting her hand on Seth’s unbeating heart. “He saved us. He’s a hero.”
Rylie wasn’t relieved. It felt like a silver knife twisted in her chest.
The lie didn’t feel any better than the truth.
“Thank you for bringing him home,” Abram said.
Elise nodded. She looked at Rylie when she said, “You’re welcome.”
The new moon came the next evening. From inside the cottage where Lincoln recuperated, Elise could hear the pack’s mournful howls echoing over the mountains like a song. It filled the hollows under the trees, the gray sky, made the falling snow tremble.
She might have been imagining it, but she thought that she could hear Rylie’s cry loudest of all.
Elise knew that she shouldn’t have been wasting time on Earth, but she couldn’t make herself leave Lincoln’s bedside. As soon as she did, she would have to go back to Hell and take charge in the Palace. Her Palace. As much as she longed for the warmth and heat of Hell’s wind and an escape from the chill of early winter, she mentally balked at the idea of how much responsibility was waiting for her below.
